BANKING ANALYTICS

Ranking of the Azerbaijani banking sector (ranking includes the information component of the banking sector, the main events of the world economy, the analytical review of the main indices of the banks which are being ranked)

Life sentence for failed Times Square bomber

Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born US citizen, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Tuesday for a failed terror attack in which he left a car-bomb in a crowded Times Square street in New York, dpa reported.

Noone was injured in the May 1st attack after the home-made bomb failed to explode.

US District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum gave the maximum sentence as demanded by US prosecutors, who charged Shahzad with 10 counts from terrorism to weapons charges.

Cedarbaum was quoted as saying after she announced the sentence in packed courtroom in Lower Manhattan that the punishment was "to protect the public from further crimes of this defendant and others who would seek to follow him."

Shahzad, 30, was defiant in court - the same attitude he had adopted since his arrest by US Federal Bureau of Investigation agents less than three days after him left the bomb in a vehicle parked in Times Square.

The agent seized him after preventing a Dubai-bound commercial airplane from taking off from New York's John F Kennedy International Airport.

Shahzad cooperated with US prosecutors after his arrest and reportedly told them that he would plead "100 times over" for his act as a protest to the US military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He told prosecutors he placed the bomb that he made himself at his home in Connecticut in the van parked in Times Square and walked away after lighting the fuse. He decided to return home after hearing no explosion after five minutes. He said had planned a second bomb after the first one failed.

US prosecutors said in documents filed at the court last week that Shahzad returned home in Connecticut to report by email to his Taliban contacts in Pakistan of the failed bomb.

"Mr Shahzad's goal was to maximize the deadly effect of his bomb," US attorney Preet Bharara said in court papers to Cedarbaum.

"The premeditated attempt to kill and maim scores of unsuspecting innocent men, women and children with a homemade bomb can only be described as utterly reprehensible," Bharara said.

US prosecutors said Pakistani Taliban helped to develop and finance Shahzad's bombing plot. The bomber had spent 40 days with the Taliban in Waziristan, Pakistan, from December to January and received five days of bomb training.

Shahzad said at his first appearance before a US judge in June that he did not chose any particular buildings but only the center of Times Square to maximize casualties from the bomb explosion.

Shahzad lived in Connecticut for the last 10 years and worked as financial analyst after receiving master's degrees from the University of Bridgeport.